Privacy and cookies

Introduction

At Wiltshire Citizens Advice we collect and use your personal information to help solve your problems, improve our services and tackle wider issues in society that affect people's lives.

We only ask for the information we need. We always let you decide what you're comfortable telling us, explain why we need it and treat it as confidential.

When we record and use your personal information we:

  • only access it when we have a good reason
  • only share what is necessary and relevant
  • don't sell it to commercial organisations

We handle and store your personal information in line with the law.

Using our website - our privacy policy

When you use our website, we collect your information in a number of ways.

We use data called 'cookies' to get information about how you're using our website - for example, what pages you click on and what device you're using. 

Find out more about how we collect and use cookies when you browse our website here.

We also collect information about you if you:

  • use the 'Email page' function on our web pages

If you used the 'Email page' function

We'll collect your name and email address so you can email a link of the page to someone you know.

If you contact us for email advice

If you use our ‘Contact’ form, for example to request advice by email, your information will be logged on Citizens Advice case management systems. Here you can find out more about how Citizens Advice use and store your information.

In most cases, as well as logging your email advice request form in Citizens Advice case management systems, copies are also stored online in a secure part of our website. It's stored there for up to 3 months before being deleted.

Emails between you and your adviser are stored within our local Wiltshire Citizens Advice email systems. Below you can download our local privacy policy and find out more about how Wiltshire Citizens Advice keep these emails secure.

Wiltshire Citizens Advice Privacy Policy
  

Storing your information

Your information is stored securely on our own internal systems. All volunteers and staff who access your data have had data protection training to make sure your information is handled sensitively and securely.

We keep your data for 6 years and it's then deleted.

Get in touch with us about your data

You can contact us at any time and ask us:

  • what information we've stored about you
  • to change or update your details
  • to delete your details from our records
  • to stop using your information.

Send us a message using our Contact form or write to us at: Wiltshire Citizens Advice, 3 Avon Reach, Monkton Hill, Chippenham, Wiltshire SN15 1EE. 

If you want to make a complaint

If you're not happy with how we've handled your data, you can make a complaint.

You can also raise your concern with the Information Commissioner's office.

Note: This privacy policy only covers this website www.citizensadvicewiltshire.org.uk. Other websites linked from this website are not covered by this policy. Once you have accessed another website via one of our links you will be subject to the security and privacy policy of that site.

Cookies: 

By using the Wiltshire Citizens Advice website you are confirming that you are happy to accept our use of cookies. Below you can find out more about how we use them.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small, harmless files placed on your computer’s hard drive or in your browser memory when you visit a website.

What do cookies do?

Cookies help to make the interaction between users and websites faster and easier. For example, they can remember your preferences for selected text resizing style, contrasts and even language selection. What cookies don’t do is store any personal or confidential information about you.

We use track aspects of user visits, including the length of a user’s visit, their browser, geographic location and the use of the search facility on this website.

Below is a list of the cookies we use:

Cookies

Purpose
Random code This is the session ID and expires when the browsing session ends
reDimCookieHint

This cookie checks and save the user's consent to our use of cookies on our website.

This cookie is set once the user is notified that the website uses cookies. It remains on your computer for 1 year so that the website can remember that the user has previously been notified that the website uses cookies. This way, the cookie pop-up message will only be displayed every year. If this is removed the Cookie notice will re-appear.

joomla_user_state 

If you have a user account, this cookie is set so that you remain logged-in during each page visit and expires when the browsing session ends

Google Analytics cookies:

_ga

_gat

_gid

Google Analytics uses cookies to help us to track which pages are accessed. This allows us to understand how popular our site is and record visitor trends over time. The cookies contain no personally identifiable information but some of them do use your IP address to help determine where in the world you are accessing the site from and to track pages you visit within the site.

You can find more information on Google Analytics tracking at: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsCookies.html

Hotjar cookies:

_hjTLDTest

_hjid 

_hjIncludedInPageviewSample

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. 

For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.

How you can manage or delete cookies

If you don’t want to receive cookies, you can change settings in your web browser so that your browser tells you when cookies are sent to it or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can also delete cookies that have already been set. However, some website features or services may not function properly without cookies and you may not be able to access parts of our website.

If you wish to restrict or block web browser cookies, the Help function within your browser should tell you how. Alternatively, these sites can provide more information on how to do this:

Contact us
Please use this form to get advice or to contact us.

We will usually respond to your enquiry by email, however sometimes we may need to call you (for example a foodbank request). We aim to respond to your enquiry within 5 working days, however during busy times it may take a little longer. Please check your junk and spam folders if you have not received a response.

If your enquiry is urgent, it’s usually better to call us on 0808 278 7995 (Lines are open Monday to Friday 9am to 4pm. Closed on public holidays, and over the festive period).
For more ways to get advice, click here.

Please note we will be closed over the festive period from noon on Tuesday 24 December 2024 and will reopen on Thursday 2 January 2025 at 9am. You can still send us your enquiry using this form during the festive period; and we will reply when we reopen.

Note: We are only able to give advice to Wiltshire residents. If you live outside Wiltshire you can find your nearest Citizens Advice here.

Your personal information
We need to record information about you to help with your enquiry. We have a legitimate interest to do this. We collect and use your personal information to help with your problem, improve our services and tackle wider issues in society that affect people’s lives. We keep what you tell us safe and confidential and you always decide what you share with us. You can read more about how we handle and store your data in our privacy policy.

Your details
If you are contacting us on behalf of someone else (family member, friend etc), there is limited information we can provide. Please get them to contact us themselves to allow us to provide the best service.

Fields marked with ( * ) are required.
If you don’t have a phone or don’t want us to call you, please write 000.
Special category personal data
We need your consent to record and use your special category data, which includes information about your ethnicity, health / disability, religion, sexual orientation, or trade union membership. We will only use this information for the purposes detailed in our data protection statement. Without this explicit consent we may not be able to give you full advice.
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Can we contact you for feedback? We want to make sure our service meets your needs. To help us understand how we’re doing and to improve our service, we may want to contact you at a later date to ask for your feedback. Sometimes we need a trusted research organisation to help us do that.

We’ll decide who we contact for feedback based on the services you used and the advice area. We may also use your special category data so that we hear from different groups.

If you agree to us getting in touch for feedback please let us know how you’d prefer to be contacted by ticking the boxes below.

I agree to Citizens Advice selecting me for feedback using my information and I give permission to be contacted for feedback by (please tick all that apply):